Tableau Public Frequently Asked Questions

Tableau Public is a free service that lets anyone publish interactive data visualizations to the web. Visualizations that have been published to Tableau Public (“vizzes”) can be embeded into webpages and blogs, they can be shared via social media or email, and they can be made available for download to other users. Visualizations are created in the accompanying app Tableau Desktop Public Edition (or another Edition of Tableau Desktop) - no programming skills are required. Be sure to look at the gallery to see some of the visualizationspeople in the community have been creating.

Who is Tableau Public for?

Tableau Public is for anyone interested in understanding data and sharing those findings as datavisualizations with the world. Journalists, writers, bloggers, students, professors, hobbyists, critics, citizens and more. As soon as a workbook is published to Tableau Public, the viz is accessible by anyone on the internet (with some restirictions - see below), so be sure to only use data that is suitable for a public audience. If you or your organization wants to analyse non-public data, look at our suite of products, including Tableau Desktop Professional Edition, Tableau Server and Tableau Online, on tableau.com, or contact sales@tableau.com.

Trying to find questions about using Tableau? Visit our community(Note: While you can view all questions and replies from the community, you will need to log in to post a question or reply. More details about how to log in here)

I didn't activate my account in the 5 days following reception of the email. Can I still activate it now?

Yes. , Please follow these 3 steps:

Click on ‘Forgot your password?’ and enter your email address to get a reset password email. Do NOT click on the link to reset password.

Try to log in again and when you see ‘you need to activate your account’ click “Resend email” and enter your email address

Go to your email, open the “Activate your Profile” email and click on the link to activate your account. It should redirect you to your profile page. Now your account is activated and you can log in as normal.

I've forgotten my password. How do I reset it?

Just follow these steps:

Click on ‘Forgot your password?’ and enter your email address to get a reset password email.

Go to your email, open the “Password reset” email and click on the link to reset your password. It should redirect you to your profile page.

For security reasons we use an automatic service to send activation and password reset emails. If you don’t receive your email (and it’s not in your spam folder), it’s possible that it has been removed by a firewall filter. Please try requesting your activation/password reset email again from a different device (for example on your mobile phone opposed to your laptop), and on a different network (for example on your home wifi, opposed to your work wifi).

Why can't I log in to the Tableau Community using my Tableau Public log in details?

The login accounts for Tableau Public, the Tableau Community, and Tableau.com are not linked – so you will need to create an account in order to sign-in to the Community specifically. We hope to have a single login at some point in the future, but currently you will need to maintain separate accounts for the different services.

Using Tableau Public

How do people find the visualizations I've saved to Tableau Public?

Once you save your work to Tableau Public, it may be shared by sending people the link to the visualization’s home page, via email, twitter, facebook etc. You can also embed the viz in your own website - see previous question.

Can I prevent people from finding the visualizations I've saved to Tableau Public?

Tableau Public is meant as a platform for sharing data visualizations on the web. You do have the opportunity to set a viz to unlisted on your profile - that means visitors to your profile page can’t see the viz among the thumbnails. This can be handy, for instance, when saving a draft of your work in progress.

However, please note that anyone who knows (or stumbles across) the URL for the viz, can see it, so be sure not to use this service for data that is not meant for sharing. (On the positive side, this means you can send people a link to a unlisted viz.)

Can my viz or the data behind my viz be downloaded by others? What’s the "Download" link on the viz?

As per the default setting, any Tableau Public viz as well as the underlying data can be downloaded by clicking the download link in the lower right corner of the viz. The workbook (TWBX file) can be opened by anyone with Tableau Desktop (Professional, Personal or Public Edition).

You can toggle off the ability to download the workbook and the underlying data set in the viz settings. You can also set the default behavior for new vizzes in your profile settings.

Do I need to use Tableau Desktop (Public Edition) if I already own a commercial version of Tableau Desktop (Personal or Professional)?

No! Tableau Desktop comes in three editions: Public, Personal, and Professional. All of them allow you to save your workbook to the Tableau Public platform.

Are Tableau Public vizzes responsive?

When embedding vizzes in your website you have several options for optimizing them for use across different devices and screensizes.

-Set the dashboard size to “automatic” or “range”

- build different dashboards of different sizes (e.g. a large one for desktop computers and a small one for mobile devices), save them under a different name and have your CMS swap out the embed code according to the size of your browser or screen.

- As of version 10.0 you will be able to define different dashboard sizes and the respective content within the app before publishing the viz. You can then save your viz as per normal and use a single embed code in your CMS. The Tableau Pulic server will serve up the dashboard that is most suitable for the size of the browser window.

Are any plug-ins required to view a Tableau viz?

No plug-ins are required. All you need is a web browser with JavaScript enabled.

How can I delete a viz from Tableau Public?

To delete a viz from Tableau Public, go to your profile page, hover over the thumbnail image of the viz in question, and click the little trash can icon.

What happens if I delete a workbook from Tableau Public and there are links to it in blogs or other web locations?

Once a workbook s deleted from Tableau Public, it cannot be retrieved from Tableau Public by anyone. All links or other references to it that may have been shared will not be able to load the viz and will display an error message on the page. This also applies to vizzes embedded in other websites.

Can I save to Tableau Public a workbook with a live connection to a data source?

It is only possible to have a live data connection to a Tableau Public workbook if you use a Google sheets data source. You can then select to have the Google sheets automatically every 24 hours. For all other data sources (like excel or a csv) it is not possible to save to Tableau Public any workbooks with a live connection to a data source. An extract needs to be generated. When saving a workbook to Tableau Public from Tableau Desktop Professional edition, a data source extract needs to be generated by the user. In the case of Tableau Desktop Public Edition, the extract is automatically generated when saving the workbook to Tableau Public on the web.

Tableau Desktop (Public Edition) is limited to 15,000,000 rows of data per workbook.

Embedding Tableau Public

I have my own blog or website. Can I embed my Tableau Public viz there?

Yes. Once you have saved your data visualization on Tableau Public, you can look up the embed code and use it in your orwn webpage or blog. Be sure you use the generated embed code and not just the URL of the visualization’s homepage, so as to only embed the viz without the borders around it.

What blog services is Tableau Public compatible with?

Embedding Tableau Public content requires support for embedded html content, including script tags. Compatible blogs include

Blogger by Google (blogger.com)

Typepad (typepad.com) – Make sure to edit your posts in HTML mode rather than Rich Text, otherwise the Tableau Public embed codes don’t get preserved.

Wordpress (wordpress.org) – WordPress is completely customizable and can be used for almost anything. Web host required.

Squarespace (squarespace.com) – Make sure you use a code block.

Where do I get the embed code for a viz from?

You can get the embed code for any viz by clicking the ‘share’ icon in the viz footer.

About Tableau Public

What kind of technology is a Tableau viz?

A Tableau viz is essentially an AJAX-based JavaScript application.

What are the system requirements for the desktop software?

Check out our product page for complete specs and system requirements.

Is Tableau Desktop (Public Edition) available for Mac?

Yes! Check out our download page for more details. Download the latest version and give it a try.